February 2024

Rachana Pradhan and Hannah Recht Nurse midwife Beverly Maldonado recalls a pregnant woman arriving at Ascension Saint Agnes Hospital in Maryland after her water broke. It was weeks before the baby would have any chance of survival, and…

Daniel Chang and Andy Miller As a part-time customer service representative, Jolene Dybas earns less than $15,000 a year, which is below the federal poverty level and too low for her to be eligible for subsidized health insurance on the…

Last year alone, David Mitchell paid $16,525 for 12 little bottles of Pomalyst, one of the pricey medications that treat his multiple myeloma, a blood cancer he was diagnosed with in 2010. The drugs have kept his cancer at bay.…

Last month, my colleague Lauren Sausser told you about the Biden administration’s crackdown on insurance plans’ prior authorization policies, with new rules for certain health plans participating in federal programs such as…

Bernard J. Wolfson Millions of Medi-Cal beneficiaries can now save for a rainy day, keep an inheritance, or hold on to a modest nest egg, without losing coverage, thanks to an eligibility change phased in over the past year and a half.…

The No Surprises Act, the landmark law intended to protect patients from surprise out-of-network medical bills, has come with, well, some surprises. A little more than two years after it took effect, there’s good and bad news…

Nothing melts our hearts like a health policy valentine. Readers made us swoon this season, writing poetic lines about prescription drug pricing, medical debt, primary care shortages, and more.  Here are some of our favorites, starting…

Don Thompson SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Drug overdose deaths in California state prisons rebounded to near record levels last year even as corrections officials touted the state’s intervention methods as a model for prisons and jails across…

Lawmakers and regulators in Washington are starting to puzzle over how to regulate artificial intelligence in health care — and the AI industry thinks there’s a good chance they’ll mess it up. “It’s an incredibly daunting…

In the battle to control health care costs, hospitals are deploying their political power to protect their bottom lines. The point of contention: For decades, Medicare has paid hospitals — including hospital-owned physician…